Amazingrace

8 years. PFAL in '76. WOW in '82. Left in '83. Was active in twig most of those years... met a lot of really excellent people... people with hearts of gold... and met some idiots along the way also... the heartless ones. Thankful for the basic understanding of the bible.

Thank you, likeaneagle, The county serarch led me to a "State Police" search. Exact home addresses are not mapped but at least I am able to obtain some information. All three people listed work in my city. That's important to know. I still plan on writing legislature. We should be able to access info as easily as most of the entire country. Thanks, again, for the good suggestion.

Thank you for the sites. I've just discovered I live in the dark-age State of Pennsylvania. Offenders from Pennsylvania are not allowed to be mapped. Guess its time to contact someone in legislature. I can't believe I don't have access to this information.

There are just some things in life I can't make my mind up on and the JC/Trinity debate is one of them. In personal prayer and worship, I tend to lean towards Jesus Christ not being God and I wonder if that's because I've had more teaching on this belief, or simply because that's the one that's easier for me to believe. I'm currently attending a teaching on and for the Trinity and I will do a little research outside this teaching. I grew up with a trinity belief, but honestly, I go back and forth on this and I do belive it's ok. It's something I'm still trying to understand, but if I never come to a conclusion one way or the other, I don't believe it has any bearing on my afterlife. It doesent have a negative impact on how I worship now. Sometimes I embrace both concepts during the same week. Other weeks I feel differently. I know there are all kinds of people out there who might think this is wrong... I'm not here to argue my belief or lack thereof. dmiller, your picture does explain my stand (or position on the fence), and I have a book around here with many more just like that, and tons of those books where you see nothing but patterns until you've stared yourself silly and then the picture (sharks or whatever is hidden in the picture) jumps out at you. (Hint: you have to stare a really LONG time to see the picture.) It is about seeking people who love... and for me... also... finding people with little love, being an example to them (fruits of the spirt come to mind). Some reject, but most want to know my secret. I love to plant seeds. Makes me know, as the song says, He (JC) IS a friend of mine. That's all I need for now.

I wanted a lifetime of Christian service. I DIDN'T want a lifetime of serving TWI. It was this EXACT line of thinking that kept me out of the WC in ' 83. Just comming off the wow field, having seen a year full of.... well... I prefer to put my stories in another thread... let's just say that, at one point, I was the only one left in my wow family of four. But I stayed.... stayed becasue some WC person screamed in my face that I'd never make it the entire year. That confrontation was in front of a group before I went wow. I do believe it's called "humiliated". It was my desire to serve God, but I ended up serving man to show man he was wrong. However, the credit still goes to God because I had to pray all the time not to leave the field. God knew my heart. God made His presence known and that was enough to keep me on the field. AND SO... standing at the ROA outside the main tent while some "MOG" was teaching/screaming something.... I got to thinking that he sounded a lot like that WC leader a year ago who yelled in my face.... and..... as a matter of fact, he sounded a lot like my extremely dysfunctional father who used to scream at me all the time growing up. It was truly the first time I ever thanked God for coming from a dysfunctional family. I may be slow at a lot of things (this I freely admit), and I may not have known exactly what I wanted in life at that very moment, but it was ever so clear to me what I didn't want. Any thoughts of entering the WC died at that moment. Yup... standing outside the main tent at ROA. I knew it would be my lifetime and I knew I was not willing to give it up for TWI. I felt like I had just spent the last year kissing TWI's bottom and all I got was a stupid pin. (I'm happy for you if your pin means something!) It's just not what I wanted for my life so I got out then. It was a good time to leave.

It was the Hurricane that shook me. Odd as it may sound, Hurricane Katrina flooded my mind with WOW memories from '83 in New Orleans. Made me realize how much I missed worshiping. It had been twenty years after leaving TWI and I still hadn't found a church to worship at. I was sick and tired of praying by myself all these years. Made a resolution to find a church before Christams. I attended my first service on Christmas Eve. I was unbelievably blessed BUT.... in the next few weeks, I found myself picking teachings apart, and it gave me the feeling that I may never be able to worship anywhere again. I wondered what had happend to twi after all these years. I decided to find out. A search of The Way (I had forgotten the International part!) gave me pages of everything but what I was looking for. BUT then I remembered back in '76 the "cult" propaganda going around about twi. I remembered how we were briefed at twig not to speak to the press under any circumstances and not to listen to anyone or read anything relating to cults. I searched "cults". That search led me to "The Cult That Snapped". I read every excerpt that night. I am at a loss for words in describing what I felt. Things get blurry now. I do believe there was a reference to Waydale on KK's site. I could be wrong... but SOMETHING led me to searching Waydale and finding GreaseSpot instead. In my initial visit to GSC, after reading SO much info that I never knew, I decided that I probably will flourish in the church I am currently attending without being bound to ghosts of the past.

Yes, how right you are, we would be healthier to leave all of this junk out. However, we can't turn back the hands of time. It's not going to go away. It is up to each individual to take steps to ensure their own health. My family is minimally exposed to toxins, hormones, flouride... but I know that I can't eliminate exposure to all of it. My children were adopted from Russia and nowhere near the size of American children. Many factors play into this fact but the main one, I believe, is that there are no hormones in the dairy products in Russia. American girls are maturing at an alarming rate (at least they were when I researched this subject a while back). Growth hormones in animals carry over into people. My children do have disabilities (high-functioning autism and ADD) however these disabilites stem from other sources. I can't beat the system, but I don't need to join it either. Organic is a good way to go IMO.

I like the sheman's path method.... the maelstrom/vortex analyzing analogy of closure. I would suggest that the sheman method could be used successfuly in many instances, however, I will always be an advocate of time. If I incur a severe hurt today, I can't stand in the maelstrom tomorrow and let it all die. Once, at a non-affiliated twi seminar, about 20 of us wrote all of our childhood hurts down on separate post-its. We then stuck all the notes to us. We thought about direct negative results that came from the hurts. We then ripped them off and threw them into a huge fire. It was kind of liberating to do that (until we realized the chimney damper was closed). Once the smoke cleared, we wrote the opposite word of the particular hurt on a post-it and stuck those words to us. We walked around all day with sticky notes posted everywhere on us. Whenever anyone greeted us, they had to choose a name off of one of our post-its. Sounds goofie now, but I walked away changed for the bettter. I need closure in two major areas of my life right now, but I'm not in a position to demand that it happen now. It's too soon. I can't stand in a maelstrom. I can't wallpaper myself in post its. The only thing I can do is wait. I neglected to say anything about prayer for closure in previous posts because I'm new to GSC. Personally speaking, I make my needs known to God and wait for God's time. In the meantime, I move forward, always knowing that.... this too shall pass.

I started attending a non-denominational church in December. They claim their only mission is to bring people to a better relationship with Jesus Christ. The music is contemporary. The dress is casual. The love of God is evident in the people I have met A baptism ceremony was held in February. I cringed in the weeks leading up to it... completely uncomfortable with TWI stuff in my head... completely wondering... right? or wrong?. No teachings on baptism were given in the weeks leading up to the ceremony. When dunkin day came, our pastor wore a baseball cap and football jersey for the teaching. Said he wears the colors of his teams because he's a sports fan and he loves his teams. Said that baptizm was an outward showing of your colors for Christ (IHO). He wears the colors because it's a showing that he's proud to be a follower of Jesus. He didn't say you "have" to be baptized. He said he baptizes people because it's a good way to show that you wear your spiritual colors... because it shows commoridity for whom you believe in. (Of course he read baptizm scripture.) I'm not being fair to his teaching, so I'll stop now. It was a good teaching. Point is, I still don't know what is right, but I was happy to be able to watch people be baptized. I remember being happy for everyone, especially God, and thinking, even if wasn't the right thing to do, how could God NOT be pleased. It's only fair to say I don't have corp training. I think anyone who was in the WC would have a more difficult time finding a church to fit on various levels. But the point is, I'm less caught up in the strictness of what is right and wrong. In teachings reagarding the Trinity, I am not sure what is right and wrong. Do I dare even say I'm confused! For now, it's completely ok for me to say "I don't know." It's something I need to work for myself and my books await me. Most churches don't come anywhere near perfect. I just needed a place to worship with people I felt comfortable with (tried a few of those churches where nobody talks to you). If I find myself getting filled up with TWI stuff, I focus on the main reason for being there and the other stuff fades.

Thanks for the warm welcome! Pronounced Amazingrace because it is. Pronounced Amazin Grace because I am. Pronounced Amazing Race because.... um.... oh... I know!... It's CLOSURE.... closure to the answer "Why am I here?" To run the Amazing Race of Life, of course, along with people from every amazing race. (Hey you've got to give me credit for staying on topic )

Speaking from lots of experience, closure for severe wounds takes a long time. I find that "writing" about what I feel really helps. It's almost like applying medicine to help the wound heal faster (IMO). If you can communicate your feelings (as you did in a letter) to the receipent, sometimes that's all that's needed. I am sorry for you that you suffered so long. You are right about the baggage. Who needs it! It's best to get on with life, but it's just so difficult to do when you're hurting. I don't know the exact reason I am here, but I do know that every day I seek out positives... I will need to recall all the positive things I can for the difficult journies that are ahead. I struggled so very much after leaving TWI. Wouldn't call it a severe wound, but I carried a ton of guilt around. GSC has been healing to me. The guilt is gone. The guilt has turned into spiritual confusion, but this is a good thing. It challenges me to seek answers. I'm not sure if I feel that "time heals all wounds", but I do know time makes them better. Time has done a remarkable job on healing some wounds of mine that I thougt for sure would follow me all the days of my life. Others... well... a pang of pain will still show it's face every now and then. Time makes some things more bearable.